Is (almost) every single application reviewed by an adcom?

[Engrailed]

Unless the computer screens something like MCAT less than 500, Im amazed at how a school can review anything from 5000-12000 applications in just a matter of weeks!

What do they spend the most time on? PS? Transcripts?

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[993444]

I don't know how anything works behind the scenes.

However, I would imagine that a sizable portion of candidates can be rejected with a quick 5 minute glance of the app. Especially at top schools.

 

[Engrailed]

But so they actually do spend even at least 5 mins? Haha

 

[getdown]

If you don't meet the GPA/MCAT cut off minimum doubt it gets reviewed. No school has the time to review every single one individually. Auto screened out the people that probably will get rejected anyway. THey'll take your money for secondaries though.

 

[Engrailed]

What if you took the mcat more than once and one of the subsections is wayyyy below avg. say 123 in CARS

 

[Seihai]

Let's just do some back-of-the-napkin calculations here.

Assume a school has 5 people reviewing applications for 2 hours a day, and each application gets a 5 minute cursory review. How many applications can they review in a day? A week? A month? 3 months?

In 2 hours, 1 person can review 24 applications at 5 minutes each. This means 5 people can review 120 applications in one day.

120 applications per day is 600 applications per week, which equals 2400 applications per month (~20 working days/month). In three months, such a school could give 7200 applications 5 minutes each.

Consider also that people don't apply all at the same time. I'd also like to think I was conservative in my estimates of time, manpower, and such, so these numbers are lower than the actual values.

Also consider that many people apply to schools they have zero chance to get into (so many people donate money to Harvard because they think "why not?") and you can see how schools might be able to review all of these applications pretty nicely.

 

[Seihai]

What if you took the mcat more than once and one of the subsections is wayyyy below avg. say 123 in CARS

This bodes pretty poorly for you. Most MD schools I know of would screen you out just for your sub-124 CARS score. You'd be best off applying DO.

 

[Engrailed]

Yes, bur Ive retaken it and that section has def improved, and overall is 514-516

 

[Seihai]

Yes, bur Ive retaken it and that section has def improved, and overall is 514-516

You're going to need to be more specific - what's your score breakdown for each time you've taken it?

If you've only retaken it once and managed to get a good score with >125 in every section, you're in good shape. If you've retaken it 6 times, you're not. It varies quite a bit based on what schools you're applying to, as well.

 

[Engrailed]

Retook it once. So now it makes the at least the 10-25% cutoff for all midtier schools

 

[993444]

Let's just do some back-of-the-napkin calculations here.

Assume a school has 5 people reviewing applications for 2 hours a day, and each application gets a 5 minute cursory review. How many applications can they review in a day? A week? A month? 3 months?

In 2 hours, 1 person can review 24 applications at 5 minutes each. This means 5 people can review 120 applications in one day.

120 applications per day is 600 applications per week, which equals 2400 applications per month (~20 working days/month). In three months, such a school could give 7200 applications 5 minutes each.

Consider also that people don't apply all at the same time. I'd also like to think I was conservative in my estimates of time, manpower, and such, so these numbers are lower than the actual values.

Also consider that many people apply to schools they have zero chance to get into (so many people donate money to Harvard because they think "why not?") and you can see how schools might be able to review all of these applications pretty nicely.

The pre-II review process is rarely that simple. Usually there are multiple people reviewing the same app before a final decision is made in order to give each application a fair assessment.

 

[993444]

If you don't meet the GPA/MCAT cut off minimum doubt it gets reviewed. No school has the time to review every single one individually. Auto screened out the people that probably will get rejected anyway. THey'll take your money for secondaries though.

Usually schools with extremely strict cutoffs screen out before the secondary invite.

I don't know if a school would send someone a secondary and then reject that person immediately ONLY for not meeting a certain MCAT score. Seems extremely unethical. Now, there are situations where a school will look at someone with a super low MCAT score to see if there are other jaw-dropping portions of the application that make up for it. But as long as the app gets reviewed is all that matters.

 

[Seihai]

The pre-II review process is rarely that simple. Usually there are multiple people reviewing the same app before a final decision is made in order to give each application a fair assessment.

This is why I severely deflated several of my numbers. I sincerely doubt that any given school only has 5 reviewers working 2 hours a day, and significant numbers of applicants are easily noncompetitive and are screened out before they ever get a look by a reviewer. The actual number that they review in a day/week/month is likely significantly greater than this.

 

[Engrailed]

Every application is screened and initially evaluated. Virtually every application is either fully evaluated and considered or for Applications that are screened out, thery are evaluated as well in what I refer to as the “reject review” step

Is that true for mostly all schools?
(Also, cant wait to get that reject review for a lot of the schools im applying to! Haha)

 

[chlorocruorin]

An adcom im close with at a T20 said all he reads is the PS and glances over the Experience titles. He had no idea what a secondary was nor as he ever read one.

 

[LizzyM]

I can do a cursory review of an application (6 factors) in 120 seconds. Even with a bit of a mental break I could cover 25 in an hour. (This is not reading PSs LORs, ECs). If the application meets initial screen, it goes to at least 2 adcom members for further review before ii.

 

[Engrailed]

I can do a cursory review of an application (6 factors) in 120 seconds. Even with a bit of a mental break I could cover 25 in an hour. (This is not reading PSs LORs, ECs). If the application meets initial screen, it goes to at least 2 adcom members for further review before ii.

Can you tell us what those 6 factors are??

 

[LizzyM]

Can you tell us what those 6 factors are??

I won't say specifically but they are very cut and dry categorical and continuous variables. They might include: GPA, sGPA, MCAT, paid or volunteer clinical experience (y/n), military service (y/n), EO-1 (y/n), URM (y/n), state resident (y/n). A reviewer could use a tool that weighs and sums the variables to come up with a number below which one' is set aside and above which one is sent for further review.

 

[Engrailed]

I won't say specifically but they are very cut and dry categorical and continuous variables. They might include: GPA, sGPA, MCAT, paid or volunteer clinical experience (y/n), military service (y/n), EO-1 (y/n), URM (y/n), state resident (y/n). A reviewer could use a tool that weights and sums the variables to come up with a number below which one' is set aside and above which one is sent for further review.

Oh interesting! Thank you

 

[mmchick]

I don't know if a school would send someone a secondary and then reject that person immediately ONLY for not meeting a certain MCAT score. Seems extremely unethical. Now, there are situations where a school will look at someone with a super low MCAT score to see if there are other jaw-dropping portions of the application that make up for it. But as long as the app gets reviewed is all that matters.

This happens all the time... more schools than not. Most ivies are sending out automatic secondaries. You think Columbia is going to accept a 480? Someone already mentioned up there that so many people donate to Harvard every year for the "why not" - automatic secondaries. Doesn't mean a darn thing what is on your application.. so long as you're verified, vast majority of schools will send and collect your secondary app fee then proceed to screen you out. It's just not even viscerally possible for a school to otherwise review up to 12,000 apps (with ~47% of applicants applying with <505 MCAT) in a time orderly fashion.

 

[Seihai]

I won't say specifically but they are very cut and dry categorical and continuous variables. They might include: GPA, sGPA, MCAT, paid or volunteer clinical experience (y/n), military service (y/n), EO-1 (y/n), URM (y/n), state resident (y/n). A reviewer could use a tool that weights and sums the variables to come up with a number below which one' is set aside and above which one is sent for further review.

Are these tools automatic or manual? Seems pretty simple to mine this data from any given AMCAS application PDF (especially if it's a y/n categorical or continuous variable) and then automatically calculate the output if you wanted to (though it could easily miss out on some more difficult things, like when an applicant classifies clinical experience as leadership or doesn't claim certain variables like URM or EO-1 for personal reasons).

Also curious - is this a per-reviewer thing or is it standardized across every school?

 

[LizzyM]

What I can do in 120 seconds is manually pull 6 variables, stick them in an electronic form that sums them, and has me select
"deny" or "send for review". The electronic form is then saved for quality check and analysis. It would be possible with enough programming support to write a program that does this but there is a public relations aspect to saying that every applications gets at least one pair of eyeballs doing a review. We won't say that those eyeballs spend 120 seconds but sometimes eyeballs matter to find and send for further review someone who has an unusual combination (e.g. impressive post-bac GPA and MCAT in a mature career changer) that isn't picked up by the basic rubric.

 

[Engrailed]

In terms of gpa and mcat where would you say the general cutoff is for that initial screen

 

[LizzyM]

In terms of gpa and mcat where would you say the general cutoff is for that initial screen

Every school is going to be different and these cut points, or the weight they receive, can change from one cycle to the next. I really don't want to share those details.

 

[Etude No. 1]

So let's say after those 6 variables, an application is "sent for review." Is the whole application reviewed by members of the adcom (e.g. adcom member A reads all of applicant 1's application) or is there any sort of "delegation"? (e.g. adcom member B reads responses to secondary Q #2).

Sorry this is kind of neurotic, I'm just wondering about the best way to give a whole picture of myself, and if redundancy between, for example, work/activities and a secondary essay is ill-advised. More specifically, I talked extensively about my research in my personal statement, so when it comes to answering a "future goals" secondary, how much should I elaborate on research? Thanks!

 

[Seihai]

So let's say after those 6 variables, an application is "sent for review." Is the whole application reviewed by members of the adcom (e.g. adcom member A reads all of applicant 1's application) or is there any sort of "delegation"? (e.g. adcom member B reads responses to secondary Q #2).

Sorry this is kind of neurotic, I'm just wondering about the best way to give a whole picture of myself, and if redundancy between, for example, work/activities and a secondary essay is ill-advised. More specifically, I talked extensively about my research in my personal statement, so when it comes to answering a "future goals" secondary, how much should I elaborate on research? Thanks!

Literally everything varies from school to school. Even the process @LizzyM described is probably not consistent for every school. There's absolutely no way to tell - write your essays assuming that the people reading it don't have access to the rest of your application, but make sure that it's not so similar that someone who does have access to the rest of it thinks you're lazy.

 

[Engrailed]

So let's say after those 6 variables, an application is "sent for review." Is the whole application reviewed by members of the adcom (e.g. ......

[BOLD] More specifically, I talked extensively about my research in my personal statement, so when it comes to answering a "future goals" secondary, how much should I elaborate on research? Thanks![/BOLD]

Im curious about the second half as well.
If you discuss the theme again, is that seen as highlighting a strength of coming off as redundant and boring?